


Under Starry Skies

by nillial



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, TAZ Amnesty, but theyre all goin' through it, everyone's more or less where they were when ep 28 ended, spoilers for ep 28 yall, who else is living in fear ep 29
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 05:23:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19192639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nillial/pseuds/nillial
Summary: When Dani comes to, she hears the familiar soft trickling of waters she knows well, feels rough, calloused hands pulling her up by the shoulders, and sees a starry night sky with a storm brewing on the horizon.-Pigeon is shaking and she can’t stop.-Mama still has Ned’s head resting in her lap when she hears sirens in the distance.-A story about what some NPCs are doing after Ned's death.





	Under Starry Skies

**Author's Note:**

> A quick warning: There's a part in Mama's section where she's describing deaths she's seen before and it's kind of graphic.

When Dani comes to, she hears the familiar soft trickling of waters she knows well, feels rough, calloused hands pulling her up by the shoulders, and sees a starry night sky with a storm brewing on the horizon.

“Dani?” A voice asks from above her. 

“Barclay,” she says, surprised by how hoarse her voice is, “what happened?”   
Barclay sighs and lets go of her, swinging his legs over the side of the pond. “What do you remember?”

She squeezes her eyes shut. Most of her recent memories are a blur. “I— I remember— I remember being attacked by something, and I remember getting hit, and— and then it was dark, and— Barclay, really, what happened?”

“Don’t worry about it for now,” he says. “Just get some rest. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

Dani nods, because God, she’s tired, and slips further into the pond, leaning back against the bank. She hears the loud booming of thunder in the distance, but can’t bring herself to care about the prospect of an approaching storm. The water is nice and her eyelids are heavy. She’s never wanted to sleep more in her life.

Maroon clouds swirl against the dark blue of the night sky, and, although she should probably be concerned about how the clouds are _ red,  _ she’s too exhausted and too lost in how pretty it all is to care. White pinpricks of light shine through wisps that have broken off of heavy storm clouds. Dani has always loved the stars. They seem brighter tonight.

“Beautiful night,” says Dani, too soft to be heard.

And she drifts off under a starry sky.

-

Pigeon is shaking and she can’t stop. 

She killed Ned.

She  _ killed  _ Ned.

_ She killed Ned. _

And she can’t get the image out of her head— the look on his face, the way he crumpled to the ground in a matter of seconds, the _ blood—  _ and her mind can’t stop replaying the way his life drained out of his eyes until there was nothing there anymore. He was just staring straight up at the sky. And, although Pigeon might chalk it up to her imagination if she didn’t remember it so vividly, he was _ smiling. _ Just a little smile. Almost imperceptible. But it was there.

She tosses her rifle into the woods. She doesn’t want to hold a gun ever, ever again.

She doesn’t know what to do. The sheriff told her something about law and consequence and going to trial, which,  _ shit, she’s probably going to prison, isn’t she? _ She didn’t catch most of it. She was too preoccupied with thinking about how she killed Ned Chicane. And how she was prepared to kill the girl who attacked him. A girl that Ned died trying to protect, which meant that that girl might have been human once. That, or Ned had some sort of messed-up death wish.

_ Jesus, Pigeon,  _ she thinks, _ you fucking killed a man and now you’re criticizing his thought process? _

She probably made things a lot worse by running from the sheriff before he was even done speaking. Pigeon doesn’t care right now, though. She has to follow Aubrey. Aubrey has to know it was an accident. That all of it was a horrible, horrible accident.

The look on Aubrey’s face when she found Ned is burned into her brain. Aubrey didn’t even believe it, at first, which was the worst thing— she tried to tell herself that, no, Ned wasn’t dead, he couldn’t be dead, while Pigeon just stood there with her rifle still smoking. And then she tried to do something to him with what Pigeon assumed was magic. All she knew was that there was this golden glow from under Aubrey’s hands, and Aubrey was wide-eyed and crying, and Pigeon, just for a second, had hope. Hope that Ned would wake up and look around and have a good laugh. Or start screaming at her. It didn’t matter. Pigeon just wanted the blood off of her hands and for Ned to be fine. She didn’t know him very well, but on the TV programs and in the museum, he seemed so full of energy. But then he hit the ground, and the life drained out of his face— a life  _ she  _ had taken.

The magic didn’t work. Aubrey ran off.

Hollis told her that Aubrey and Ned and Duck were all keeping secrets from the people of Kepler, and Pigeon knows they have been. She has known. And she felt helpless because she wants to protect people, but she can’t defend herself against one of those monsters all alone. So when Hollis asserted that the three of them by themselves weren’t enough to protect the whole of the town— that the people, not just an exclusive team of three, needed to band together to prevent disaster, Pigeon agreed. She joined the Hornets in a sorry attempt to really  _ do  _ something about the danger looming over Kepler. First few weeks on the job and she shoots one of the people trying to protect it.

The more she thinks about it, the less she believes that Aubrey, Ned, and Duck were doing wrong by Kepler by not letting its residents know about the monsters. They were afraid of panic, and of people getting hurt, and they were right. Pigeon panicked and someone got hurt.

She completes her journey, breathless and exhausted but with enough adrenaline to keep her standing. She bursts into the room before her, and the scene she’s greeted by is— something else.

There’s a middle-aged woman with a book in front of her, surrounded by all kinds of people, some of which she doesn’t think are human and some who she knows definitely aren’t human at all, and they’re all doing some sort of… magic. And Pigeon hears the wind roaring outside, relentless and terrible, and she has the feeling some massive shit is going down, but she can’t leave without telling Aubrey how sorry she is. If she does anything before a Kepler-wide apocalypse begins, that’s it.

“Aubrey,” says the middle-aged woman, “is that… a friend?”

Aubrey whips around, and as soon as she sees Pigeon, her lip curls, and her eyes, puffy, tears already threatening to spill again, narrow. She strides towards her, fists balled. “What are you doing here?” she hisses.

“Ned,” Pigeon manages to choke out, still struggling to catch her breath.

“This isn’t the best time. If you haven’t _ noticed—” _ She gestures towards the window, which reveals a giant crimson red cloud. “-- I’m  _ kind of  _ in the middle of something.”   
“I know, Aubrey, and I’ll leave you be in just a minute, I only—”

“You’re goddamn right you’ll ‘leave me be.’ I’ll toss you out that door myself. What makes you think I have to listen to you after you fucking killed Ned?”

Pigeon takes a deep breath as the same vivid scene replays— aim, fire, blood. “Aubrey, you’re absolutely right, I had no right comin’ here—”  
  
“Of course I’m right, get the fuck out—”  
  
“-- but you have to understand that I had no intention of killin’ Ned.”

Aubrey closes her eyes shut and runs her hands down her face. “Yeah, no, I got that. I  _ understand  _ that you didn’t mean to kill him. But you did, Pigeon, and he’s dead because of you. I’m not going to just… excuse you.”

“That’s not why I’m here.”  
  
“Then why are you here, Pigeon? To apologize? _ ‘Jeez, sorry I killed your friend, totally my fault.’  _ Seriously, what do you expect me to do? Give you a hug and tell you it’s okay while the world ends outside?” She gestures again to the red cloud, which seems to be accumulating more mass. “It’s not fucking okay, Pigeon! You took his life! Ned is dead! And he died thinking I hated him, Pigeon, and I did, I think I still do, but— but this wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Not by some dumbass kid with a fucking rifle.”  
  
Pigeon has to fight to speak through the tightness in her throat. “I was just… just tryin’ to protect him.”  
  
“Protect him? How? By putting a bullet through his chest?”

“No, Aubrey, there was a— sarcophagus, and— a vampire stepped out of it. I swear on what little honor I have left, there was a real, honest vampire, and she was going to kill him if I didn’t—”  
  
“Stop,” Aubrey says, and she’s wide-eyed, her brows furrowed not in anger, but in concern. “What did the vampire look like?”

Pigeon is taken aback a little, but goes on anyways. “Uh, she… She just had these real sharp fangs and horrible eyes, slits for pupils, and… she was wearin’ people clothes. Like, just clothes any one of us would wear, I mean, but they were kinda torn. And, uh… she had blonde hair, but it was real messy and greasy like she’d been in there a while. You gotta understand, Aubrey, she was actin’ absolutely wild, like she was gonna kill us, and I was afraid she’d lunge for Ned or the sheriff or somethin’. She was the one I was tryin’ to shoot. Not Ned.”

And then Pigeon sees the look on Aubrey’s face, and she’s just so utterly heartbroken. Her expression is a mix of shock and anger and absolute devastation, and Pigeon gets the feeling that Aubrey wouldn’t have forgiven her no matter where the bullet landed.  
  
Aubrey takes a deep, shaky breath, and leans in close to Pigeon. “I told Ned I wanted him gone. Now he’s dead by your hands and I’d do anything to bring him back,” she says, resentment radiating off of her. “But, frankly, Pigeon, I don’t care what happens to you. I don’t ever want to see your face again, and if I do, there will be hell to pay. Make no mistake.”  
  
Pigeon just stands and stares and trembles because there’s nothing else she can do.

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Aubrey says, turning away from her, “I’ve got a town to save, and I’d prefer it if you stayed out of the way.”

-

Mama still has Ned’s head resting in her lap when she hears sirens in the distance.

Ned is gone. She knows that. She watched the life leave his eyes. She felt his corpse grow cold. She sees him now, his face devoid of color and his body unmoving, but it doesn’t… feel real.

Mama has seen the same thing happen over and over and over again. She’s watched her colleagues die from unfathomable beings and from monsters with more strength than what anyone or anything on Earth could dream of having. She’s watched people she’s known for years die horrible, slow, painful deaths and she’s watched them die so quickly that she didn’t notice they were dead until they were already gone. The moment this new Pine Guard became the new Pine Guard, she was prepared to experience the same thing.

Or she thought she was, at least.

Ned’s death wasn’t like the rest. There was no gore, no abomination looming directly over them, no ghastly screaming that would ring in her ears and keep her up at night. Ned’s death, while awful and bloody and unexpected, was so much more  _ normal  _ than what she’s used to. Which means there’s no abomination right in front of her to take it out on, no way to avenge him, and no option of mourning the fallen after the thing that killed him is dealt with. Mama is left alone with her thoughts and a dead man on her lap.

Ned wasn’t even killed by a  _ thing _ . He was killed by a little girl. A little girl with a soul and a conscience and a set of morals. A little girl whose immediate regret was visible on her face the second the shot rang out. A murderer, but an unwilling one, and still a scared little girl. Mama couldn’t bring herself to speak to her. She didn’t know how to. She still doesn’t.

Pigeon ran into the woods in the same direction as Aubrey. A bad idea, in Mama’s mind, but an ethical one. She’s wasting her time, though. Aubrey is probably still grappling with the fact that Ned is dead and not just gone. Pigeon’s presence will only make things worse.

There’s a part of Mama that wishes he had been killed by an abomination and not a kid. At least then she’d have some way to distract herself. Some kind of monster to focus on killing instead of focusing on who’s been killed. 

She hopes Dani is alright by the time she gets back to the Lodge. She’s not sure what she’ll do otherwise.

The sheriff comes back with the coroner and a couple of paramedics in tow. One comes advancing with a body bag in their arms.

“Just wait a minute,” she tells them, holding out her hand in front of her. “Just… don’t do all that yet.”

They pause. They look at the sheriff, then back at her. 

Sheriff Owens sighs. He descends to the ground and sits down beside her. 

“Well, Mama,” he says, “what’s on your mind?”

She shrugs. 

“Mama, you’ve got a corpse next to you and you don’t want him to be taken to the morgue. There’s somethin’.”

She chuckles. “Yeah, I don’t know. It  _ is _ somethin’. I’m just not sure what.”

“Understandable. Why don’t you let the coroner take Ned here and we’ll figure it out?”

Mama averts her eyes and instead looks at trees, then at the grass, then down at her lap. “Can’t he just be left alone? Do we really gotta do the whole— body bag thing?”

“Well, I don’t want him to rot out here.”

“But… just… puttin’ him in a plastic sack? It hasn’t been that long, Sheriff.”  
  
“It ain’t like he’s gonna get tossed into a ditch somewhere. We can have a funeral. Get him a nice headstone. The whole thing. I’m sure everyone would pitch in.”

She rests her chin in her hands. “It just don’t feel right to me. It don’t feel right to bury a man who—”

“A man who’s dead?” Sheriff Owens finishes.

She’s silent for a minute. “Hard to believe he’s dead.”

“I get it, Mama. It’s hard to watch someone die and harder when they’re a friend.”

“No, Sheriff, I—” She takes a long, deep breath in and lets it out slowly. “Sheriff, I’ve seen bodies that have been mangled beyond recognition, and I’ve watched people yell last words while their innards spill out, and I’ve held too many friends while they died at the hands of somethin’ twice as strong as the both of us combined. I’ve lost people dear to me at the hands of beasts and I buried them myself, so I couldn’t tell you why this is fuckin’ me up so much. I’ve been friends with Ned just a few months, and in those months he’s lied to me and stolen from me, but I liked him alright despite that. I was prepared for him to die, but I wasn’t prepared for him to die like  _ this. _ Not by tryin’ to kill a monster, but by tryin’ to save someone who would have killed him had she gotten the chance. And I know he’s dead, I do, but I— I just keep expectin’ him to wake up.”

Sheriff Owens doesn’t say anything. Then, quiet and soft, he says, “I think it’s time to let him go, Mama.”

Mama nods wordlessly, grabs her cane, and gently eases Ned’s head off of her lap. She offers Sheriff Owens her hand. Together, they rise to their feet.

Sheriff Owens signals for the coroner and paramedics to approach. Mama watches them zip Ned up in a body bag. She hates seeing him like that, so she chooses to look at the surrounding trees instead, and then she notices—

She notices that everything is painted in just the slightest shade of red.

Slowly, hesitantly, she looks towards the sky.

A fast approaching storm rolls in, covering half of the night sky in dark, angry red clouds. Thunder booms from somewhere beyond her, loud and menacing, and lightning crackles and strikes at the woods below. The stars blink out, one by one, as heavy clouds hide them from the surface, shrouding the whole of Kepler in inescapable, impenetrable red-tinted darkness. Sheriff Owens races away ahead of her, back to where he entered from, to where the Hornets are guiding the people to safety, but Mama stays and just stares. 

She knows, from somewhere deep within her, that Kepler is going to be razed to the ground.

Her body screams at her to run and to not stop running. To gather everyone up and leave town while she still can.

Mama doesn’t move.

**Author's Note:**

> hey y'all!!!!!   
> i hope this was a good read! i listen to the amnesty episodes as they come out and my memory isn't the greatest, so forgive me if something is off. but let me know! had to get this out there before episode 29, which i am So afraid of and So excited for. we got a big storm comin and i, for one, am not ready  
> thanks for reading!  
> tumblr: nillial


End file.
